UIST 2014-10-05 Volume 2

Doctoral symposium

Poorly maintained sidewalks pose considerable accessibility challenges for
mobility impaired persons; however, there are currently few, if any, mechanisms
to determine accessible areas of a city a priori. In this paper, I introduce
four threads of research that I will conduct for my Ph.D. thesis aimed at
creating new methods and tools to provide unprecedented levels of information
on the accessibility of streets and sidewalk. Namely, I will (i) conduct a
formative study to better understand accessibility problems, (ii) develop and
evaluate scalable map-based data collection methods, (iii) integrate computer
vision algorithms to increase the scalability of the methods, and (iv) develop
accessible-aware map-based tools that demonstrate the utility of our data
(Figure 1 and 6).

Depth based interaction and field of view manipulation for augmented reality

In recent years, the market for portable devices has seen a large increase
in the development of head mounted displays. While these displays provide many
benefits to users, safety is still a concern. In particular, ensuring that
content does not interfere with everyday activities and that users have
adequate peripheral vision is very important for situational awareness. In this
paper, I address these issues through the use of two novel display prototypes.
The first is an optical see-through multi-focal plane display combined with an
eye tracking interface. Through eye tracking and knowledge of the focal plane
distances, I can calculate whether a user is looking at the environment or at a
focal plane in the display. Any distracting text can then be quickly removed so
that he or she has a clear view of the environment. The second prototype is a
video see-through display which expands a user's environmental view through the
use of 238° ultra wide field of view fisheye lenses. Based on the results
of several initial evaluations, these new interfaces have the potential help
users improve environmental awareness.

Large interaction spaces such as wall-size displays allow users to interact
not only with their hands, like traditional desktop environment, but also with
their whole body by, e.g. walking or moving their head orientation. While this
is particularly suitable for tasks where users need to navigate large amounts
of data and manipulate them at the same time, we still lack a deep
understanding of the advantages of large displays for such tasks. My
dissertation begins with a set of studies to understand the benefits and
drawbacks of a high-resolution wall-size display vs. a desktop environments.
The results show strong benefits of the former due to the flexibility of
"physical navigation" involving the whole body when compared with mouse input.
From whole-body interaction to human-to-human interaction, my current work
seeks to leverage natural human actions to collaborative contexts and to design
interaction techniques that detects gestural interactions between users to
support collaborative data exchange.

Passive brain-computer interfaces, in which implicit input is derived from a
user's changing brain activity without conscious effort from the user, may be
one of the most promising applications of brain-computer interfaces because
they can improve user performance without additional effort on the user's part.
I seek to use physiological signals that correlate to particular brain states
in order to adapt an interface while the user behaves normally. My research
aims to develop strategies to adapt the interface to the user and the user's
cognitive state using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a
non-invasive, lightweight brain-sensing technique. While passive brain-computer
interfaces are currently being developed and researchers have shown their
utility, there has been little effort to develop a framework or hierarchy for
adaptation strategies.

When teaching programming or hardware design, it is pedagogically valuable
for students to generate examples of functions, circuits, or system designs.
Teachers can be overwhelmed by these types of student submissions when running
large residential or recently released massive online courses. The underlying
distribution of student solutions submitted in response to a particular
assignment may be complex, but the newly available volume of student solutions
represents a denser sampling of that distribution. Working with large datasets
of students' solutions, I am building systems with user interfaces that allow
teachers to explore the variety of their students' correct and incorrect
solutions. Forum posts, grading rubrics, and automatic graders can be based on
student solution data, and turn massive engineering and computer science
classrooms into useful insight and feedback for teachers. In the development
process, I hope to describe essential design principles for such systems.

Creating intelligent systems that are able to recognize a user's behavior,
understand unrestricted spoken natural language, complete complex tasks, and
respond fluently could change the way computers are used in daily life. But
fully-automated intelligent systems are a far-off goal -- currently, machines
struggle in many real-world settings because problems can be almost entirely
unconstrained and can vary greatly between instances. Human computation has
been shown to be effective in many of these settings, but is traditionally
applied in an offline, batch-processing fashion. My work focuses on a new model
of continuous, real-time crowdsourcing that enables interactive crowd-powered
systems.

The large scale of online classes and the diversity of the students that
participate in them can enable new educational systems. This massive scale and
diversity can enable always-available systems that help students share diverse
ideas, and inspire and learn from each other. We introduce systems for two core
educational processes at scale: discussion and assessment. To date, several
thousand students in a dozen online classes have used our discussion system.
Controlled experiments suggest that participants in more diverse discussions
perform better on tests and that discussion improves engagement. Similarly,
more than 100,000 students have reviewed peer work for both summative
assessment and feedback. Through these systems, we argue that to create new
educational experiences at scale, pedagogical strategies and software that
leverage scale and diversity must be co-developed. More broadly, we suggest the
key to creating new educational experiences online lies in leveraging massive
networks of peers.

This paper introduces material computation to offload computing from machine
to material, in the process of creating shape-changing output. It contains the
explanation on the mechanism of transformation, the concept of material
computation, the summary and analysis of literature research within and beyond
the HCI field, the interaction loop integrating material computation, and my
own practice in material computation technics and applications.

Identifying which fingers are in contact with a multi-touch surface provides
a very large input space that can be leveraged for command selection. However,
the numerous possibilities enabled by such vast space come at the cost of
discoverability. To alleviate this problem, we introduce a three-step
interaction pattern inspired by hotkeys that also supports feed-forward. We
illustrate this interaction with three applications allowing us to explore and
adapt it in different contexts.

We present a prototyping toolkit for creating touch sensitive prototypes
from everyday objects without needing special skills such as code writing or
designing circuits. This toolkit consists of an acoustic based touch sensor
module that captures the resonant properties of objects, software modules
including one that recognizes how an object is touched by using machine
learning, and plugins for visual programming environments such as Scratch and
Max/MSP. As a result, our toolkit enables users to easily configure the
response of touches using a wide variety of visual or audio responses. We
believe that our toolkit expands the creativity of a non-specialist, such as
children and media artists.

Video Text Retouch is a technique for retouching textual content found in
many online videos such as screencasts, recorded presentations and many online
e-learning videos. Viewed through our special, HTML5-based player, users can
edit in real-time the textual content of the video frames, such as correcting
typos or inserting new words between existing characters. Edits are overlaid
and tracked at the desired position for as long as the original video content
remains similar. We describe the interaction techniques, image processing
algorithms and give implementation details of the system.

We propose an effective combination of multiple functional inks, including
conductive silver ink, thermo-chromic ink, and regular inkjet ink, for a novel
paper-based interface called Inkantatory Paper that can dynamically change the
color of its printed pattern. Constructed with off-the-shelf inkjet printing
using silver conductive ink, our system enables users to fabricate thin, flat,
flexible, and low-cost interactive paper. We evaluated the characteristics of
the conductive silver ink as a heating system for the thermo-chromic ink and
created applications demonstrating the usability of the system.

We propose a novel building-block interface called StackBlock that allows
users to precisely construct 3D shapes by stacking blocks at arbitrary
positions and angles. Infrared LEDs and phototransistors are laid in a matrix
on each surface of a block to detect the areas contacted by other blocks.
Contact-area information is transmitted to the bottom block by the relay of
infrared communication between the stacked blocks, and then the bottom block
sends all information to the host computer for recognizing the 3D shape. We
implemented a prototype of StackBlock with several blocks and evaluated the
accuracy and latency of 3D shape recognition. As a result, StackBlock could
sufficiently perform 3D shape recognition for users' flexible stacking.

A pen-based device for sketching with multi-directional traction forces

This paper presents a pen-grip-shaped device that assists in sketching using
multi-directional traction forces. By using an asymmetric acceleration of the
vibration actuator that drive in a linear direction, the system can create a
virtual traction force with the proper direction. We augment users' drawing
skills with the device that arranged 4 vibration actuators that provides a
traction force and a rotary sensation. Therefore the device is portable and
does not have any limitation of needing to be in a particular location, this
device can be used to guide the direction and assist the user who is sketching
on a large piece of paper. Moreover, users can attach it to any writing utensil
such as brushes, crayons. In this paper, we describe the details of the design
of device, evaluation experiments, and applications.

We present a modular, novel mechanical device for animation authoring. The
pose of the device is sensed at interactive rates, enabling quick posing of
characters rigged with a skeleton of arbitrary topology. The mapping between
the physical device and virtual skeleton is computed semi-automatically guided
by sparse user correspondences. Our demonstration allows visitors to experiment
with our device and software, choosing from a variety of characters to control.

This demo presents a unique technology to enable digital simulation of
flavors. The Digital Flavor Interface, a digital control system, is developed
to stimulate taste (using electrical and thermal stimulation methodologies on
the human tongue) and smell (using a controlled scent emitting mechanism)
senses simultaneously, thus simulating different virtual flavors. A preliminary
user experiment was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of this approach
with five distinct flavor stimuli. The experimental results suggested that the
users' were effectively able to identify different flavors such as minty,
spicy, and lemon flavor. In summary, our work demonstrates a novel controllable
digital flavor instrument, which may be utilized in interactive computer
systems for rendering virtual flavors.

Interactive exploration and selection in volumetric datasets with color
tunneling

Interactive data exploration and manipulation are often hindered by dataset
sizes. For 3D data, this is aggravated by occlusion, important adjacencies, and
entangled patterns. Such challenges make visual interaction via common
filtering techniques hard. We describe a set of real-time multi-dimensional
data deformation techniques that aim to help users to easily select, analyze,
and eliminate spatial and data patterns. Our techniques allow animation between
view configurations, semantic filtering and view deformation. Any data subset
can be selected at any step along the animation. Data can be filtered and
deformed to reduce occlusion and ease complex data selections. Our techniques
are simple to learn and implement, flexible, and real-time interactive with
datasets of tens of millions of data points. We demonstrate our techniques on
three domain areas: 2D image segmentation and manipulation, 3D medical volume
exploration, and astrophysical exploration.

FeelCraft is a media plugin that monitors events and states in the media and
associates them with expressive tactile content using a library of feel effects
(FEs). A feel effect (FE) is a user-defined haptic pattern that, by virtue of
its connection to a meaningful event, generates dynamic and expressive effects
on the user's body. We compiled a library of more than fifty FEs associated
with common events in games, movies, storybooks, etc., and used them in a
sandbox-type gaming platform. The FeelCraft plugin allows a game designer to
quickly generate haptic effects, associate them to events in the game, play
them back for testing, save them and/or broadcast them to other users to feel
the same haptic experience. Our demonstration shows an interactive procedure
for authoring haptic media content using the FE library, playing it back during
interactions in the game, and broadcasting it to a group of guests.

We present SikuliBot, an image-based approach to automating user interface.
SikuliBot extends the visual programming concept of Sikuli Script[2] from the
graphical UIs to the real world of physical UIs, such as mobile devices'
touch-screens and hardware buttons. The key to our approach is using a physical
robot to see an interface, identify a target, and perform an action on the
target using the robot's actuators. We demonstrate working examples on MakerBot
3D printer that could move a stylus to perform multi-touch gestures on
touchscreen to automate tasks such as swipe-to unlock, playing a virtual piano,
and playing the Angry Bird game. A wide range of automation possibilities are
made viable using a simple scripting language based on images of UI components.
The benefits of our approach are: generalizability, instrumentation-free, and
high-level programming abstraction.

In this paper, we present a novel interaction system that allows a
collocated large display and small handheld devices to seamlessly work
together. The smartphone acts both as a physical interface and as an additional
graphics layer for near-surface interaction on a computer screen. Our system
enables accurate position tracking of a smartphone placed on or over any screen
by displaying a 2D color pattern that is captured using the smartphone's
back-facing camera. The proposed technique can be implemented on existing
devices without the need for additional hardware.

Projectron mapping: the exercise and extension of augmented workspaces for
learning electronic modeling through projection mapping

There has been research using software simulations to support the learning
of electronic modeling by beginners. There have also been systems to extend
workspaces and support electronic modeling on tabletop interfaces. However, in
the case of software-based circuit operation, as it is not possible to operate
the actual elements, the feeling of actually moving the elements is lacking.
For this reason, we are proposing a system that extends the sense of reality in
software simulators through the use of projection mapping. This will make it
possible to actually give the impression of moving the elements by using a
software simulator, and to achieve both high speed and a sense of reality
through trial and error.

A method for transferring external touch input is proposed by partially
attaching a sticker to a touch-panel display. The touch input area can be
extended by printing striped patterns using a conductive ink and attaching them
to overlap with a portion of a touch-panel display. Even if the user does not
touch the touch panel directly, a touch event can be generated by touching the
stripes at an arbitrary point corresponding to the touched area. Thus,
continuous touch input can be generated, such as a scrolling operation without
interruption. This method can be applied to a variety of devices including PCs,
smartphones, and wearable devices. In this paper, we present several different
examples of applications, including a method for extending control areas
outside of the touch panel, such as the side or back of a smartphone.

Sharing full immersive experience in real-time has been the one of ultimate
goals of telecommunication. Possible application can include various
applications such as entertainment, sports viewing, education, social network
and professional assistance. Recent head-worn wearable camera enables to shoot
the first person video, however, view of angle is limited with the head
direction of the person who is wearing, and also captured video is shaky that
makes us dizzy. We propose LiveSphere, immersive experience sharing system with
wearable camera headgear that provide 360 degrees spherical images of the
user's surrounding environment. LiveSphere system performs spherical video
stabilization and transmits it to other users, so that they are enable to view
shared video comfortably and also look around at the scene from a different
view angle independently from the first person. In this note, we explain the
overview of the LiveSphere system implementation, stabilization and viewing
experience.

We present Nishanchi, a position and orientation aware handheld inkjet
printer which can be used to transfer the reference marks from CAD to the
workpiece for use in manual fabrication workflows. Nishanchi also has a
digitizing tip that can be used to input features about the workpiece to a
computer model. By allowing for this two-way exchange of information from CAD
to a nonconcormal workpiece, we believe that Nishanchi might help make
inclusion of CAD in manual fabrication workflows more seamless.

The lack of tangibility while interacting with virtual objects can be
compensated by adding haptic and/or tactile devices or actuators to enhance the
user experience. In this demonstration, we present two scenarios that consist
of perceiving moving objects on the human body (insects) and feeling physical
sensations of virtual thermal objects.

We present freeform interactive speakers for creating spatial sound
experiences from a variety of surfaces. Traditional surround sound systems are
widely used and consist of multiple electromagnetic speakers that create point
sound sources within a space. Our proposed system creates directional sound and
can be easily embedded into architecture, furniture and many everyday objects.
We use electrostatic loudspeaker technology made from thin, flexible,
lightweight and low cost materials and can be of different size and shape. In
this demonstration we will show various configurations such as single speaker,
speaker array and tangible speakers for playful and exciting interactions with
spatial sounds. This is an example of new possibilities for the design of
various interactive surfaces.

Posters

Eyes-free text entry interface based on contact area for people with visual
impairment

We developed an eyes-free text entry interface using contact area to
determine pressed state for mobile device with touchscreen. The interface gives
audio feedback for a touched character similar to VoiceOver of iPhone, but
audio feedbacks of two simultaneous touches are considered. A desired character
is entered by pressing once. Independent entry of two fingers can reduce
movement distance for searching a character. Whole interaction occurs in
touched states, additional tactile feedback can be augmented.

The ubiquitous use of Augmented Reality (AR) applications is dependent on an
easy way of authoring and using content. Present systems depend on specific
authoring tools or content delivery systems that provide a limited amount of
freedom and content ownership to the author compared to the possibilities of
the World Wide Web (WWW). Third Surface is a system that allows the user to
publish and use WWW content saved on personal HTTP servers for augmented
reality applications in the physical environment. The contribution of this work
is a system that allows a web developer to post location-based augmented
reality content and AR marker on one's own HTTP server. A Global Location
Service (GLS) provides a browsing application with location-based URLs that
link the browsing application to content, AR markers, and data for the right
positioning of content in the augmented reality interface. The Third Surface
has three advantages compared to other concepts. It is globally scalable able
to millions of users. The interactive possibilities for developers and users
are the same as for the WWW. The developers are in charge of their own content
distribution.

This paper presents the results of a pilot experiment observing the effect
of tactile cues on vocabulary learning. Considering that we generally memorize
words by associating them with various cues, we designed a tactile cue
presentation device that aids vocabulary learning by applying vibrations to the
finger that is associated with the next key to press when typing on a keyboard.
Experiments comparing tactile and visual cues indicated that tactile cues can
significantly improve long-term retention of vocabulary after one week.

Trainer: a motion-based interactive game for balance rehabilitation training

In physiotherapy, the traditional approach of using fixed aids to train
patients to keep their balance is often ineffective, due to the tendency of
people to lose interest in the training or to lose confidence in their ability
to finish the training. A Trainer system is proposed on traditional
physiotherapy treatment methods to allow patients to play qualified and
immersive games with a mobile aid. Using RF localization and self-balancing
technology, the system allows patients to control a vehicle with their sense of
balance. This platform provides a series of game feedback interface which
involves part-body motion in sitting manipulation therapy to make the
rehabilitation more flexible and more effective. This paper reports the
designing and the control of the Trainer, the experimental evaluations of the
performance of system, as well as an exploration of the future work in detail.
Our work is intended to improve the patient experience of the physiotherapy
rehabilitation using games with instinctive ways of controlling mobile
instruments.

For over a century, scientists have studied human emotions in laboratory
settings. However, these emotions have been largely contrived -- elicited by
movies or fake "lab" stimuli, which tend not to matter to the participants in
the studies, at least not compared with events in their real life. This work
explores the utility of Google Glass, a head-mounted wearable device, to enable
fundamental advances in the creation of affect-based user interfaces in natural
settings.

We consider a text entry technique for wrist-worn watches with inch-scale
touchscreens. Most of the watches which are commercially available, for
example, Galaxy Gear, Omate, etc., have around 1.5-inch touchscreens that is
too small for the shrinked Qwerty keyboard. Moreover, the virtual button-based
techniques determine input-letters by distinguishing touched locations on
touchscreens which continuously demands a user to carefully touch certain
locations. Thus, they are not suitable to tiny-touchscreen devices in mobile
environment. Instead, the proposed text entry technique allows a user to touch
almost anywhere on the touchscreen for text entry by determining input-letters
based on drag direction regardless of touched location. We implemented the
proposed method on a commercial watch with 1.54-inch touchscreen for validating
its feasibility.

Jogging can offer many health benefits, and mobile phone apps have recently
emerged that aim to support the jogging experience. We believe that jogging is
an embodied experience, and therefore present a contrasting approach to these
existing systems by arguing that any supporting technology should also take on
an embodied approach. In order to exemplify this approach, we detail the
technical specifications of a flying quadcopter that has successfully been used
with joggers in order to explore the design of embodied systems to support
physical exertion activities. Based on interviews with five joggers running
with our system, we present preliminary insights about the experience of
jogging with a flying robot. With our work, we hope to inspire and guide
designers who are interested in developing embodied systems to support exertion
activities.

We propose AirPincher, a handheld device for recognizing delicate mid-air
hand gestures. AirPincher is designed to overcome disadvantages of the two
kinds of existing hand gesture-aware techniques such as wearable sensor-based
and external vision-based. The wearable sensor-based techniques cause
cumbersomeness of wearing sensors every time and the external vision-based
techniques incur performance dependence on distance between a user and a remote
display. AirPincher allows a user to hold the device in one hand and to
generate several delicate mid-air finger gestures. The gestures are captured by
several sensors proximately embedded into AirPincher. These features help
AirPincher avoid the aforementioned disadvantages of the existing techniques.
It allows several delicate finger gestures, for example, rubbing a thumb
against a middle finger, swiping with a thumb on an index finger, pinching with
a thumb and an index finger, etc. Due to the inherent haptic feedback of these
gestures, AirPincher eventually supports the eyes-free interaction. To validate
AirPincher's feasibility, we implemented two use cases, i.e., controlling a
pointing cursor and moving a virtual 3D object on the remote screen.

Contelli: a user-controllable intelligent keyboard for watch-sized small
touchscreens

Intelligent keyboards aid fast text entry by correcting user's erroneous
input, but there is a big problem that a user always has to watch and judge of
their suggestion results. Contelli, a user-controllable intelligent keyboard,
monitors the duration of each key-tapping, and analyzes the possibility of
mistyping only for short-tapped letters. A long-tapped letter is regarded as a
precise input and excluded in the process of candidate generation from a
lexicon. Using Contelli, a user may actively "control" the intelligent
keyboards. S/he may type ordinary words quickly on watch-sized small
touchscreens. Also, s/he may input a word as typed without switching off the
automatic replacement or performing additional actions for the replaced result.
In addition, long-tapping a part of a string reduces the number of replacement
candidates, which contributes the more precise word replacement for highly
erroneous input typed on small touchscreens.

We present an elevating tangible block, G-raffe, supporting 2.5-dimensional
(2.5-D) interaction in a tabletop computing environment. There is a lack of
specialized interface devices for tabletop computing environments. G-raffe
overcomes the limitation of conventional 2-D interactions inherited from the
vertical desktop computing setting. We adopted a rollable metal tape structure
to create up and down movements in a small volume of the block. This also
becomes a connecting device for a mobile display to be used with the tabletop
computer. We report on our design rationale as well as the results of a
preliminary user study.

We propose implicit interfaces that use passive physiological input as
additional communication channels between wearable devices and wearers. A
defining characteristic of physiological input is that it is implicit and
continuous, distinguishing it from conventional event-driven action on a
keyboard, for example, which is explicit and discrete. By considering the
fundamental differences between the two types of inputs, we introduce a core
framework to support building implicit interface, such that the framework
follows the three key principles: Subscription, Accumulation, and
Interpretation of implicit inputs. Unlike a conventional event driven system,
our framework subscribes to continuous streams of input data, accumulates the
data in a buffer, and subsequently attempts to recognize patterns in the
accumulated data -- upon request from the application, rather than directly in
response to the input events. Finally, in order to embody the impacts of
implicit interfaces in the real world, we introduce two prototype applications
for Google Glass, Zero Shutter Camera triggering a camera snapshot and Phylter
filtering notifications the both leverage the wearer's physiological state
information.

Mobile Remote Presence (MRP) system that uses a smart device such as
smartphone and tablet pc as video conferencing equipment is getting popular.
There are varieties of smart devices, and the appearance of a smart device
varies from one to another. We assumed that the appropriate interpersonal
distance for an MRP system varies depending on the appearance of the smart
device. To confirm our assumption, we conducted a preliminary experiment. The
result of the experiment suggested that the value of the proper interpersonal
distance increases as the video size increases. It is known that the task load
of the remote operator of the MRP system increases if the operator is forced to
manually control the MRP system to keep the interpersonal distance to the
appropriate level, which adversely affects the quality of the communication
through MRP. To resolve the problem, we propose PoliTel, a novel MRP system
which autonomously adjusts the interpersonal distance according to the
appearance of the smart device by controlling the position or video size of
MRP, and allows the operator to concentrate more on the conversation with the
person facing to the MRP system.

A bimanual 7 Degree of Freedom (DOF) manipulation technique based on a
hybrid 3D cursor driven by the combination of mouse and trackball is presented.
This technique allows the user to move the cursor to the target location in 3D
scene by following a conceived straight or curved path. In the pilot study,
participants could learn the technique in a short time and perform the docking
task steadily without physical fatigue.

The Hairlytop Interface is a high scalability interface composed of
hair-like units called smart hairs. The original version of the smart hair
comprised a shape-memory alloy, drive circuits, and a light sensor. Simply
placing the smart hair above a light display device enabled each smart hair to
be bent and controlled by modulating the intensity of light from the display.
Various prototypes of the Hairlytop Interface have been created to show its
high flexibility in configuration. This flexibility should help users to
develop their own moving interfaces.

Increasing the playback speed of lecture videos is a common technique to
shorten watching time. This creates challenges when part of the lecture becomes
too fast to be discernible, even if the overall playback speed is acceptable.
In this paper, we present a speed-up system that preserves lecture clearness in
high playback rate. A user test was conducted to evaluate the system. The
result indicates that our system significantly improves user's comprehension
level.

Structured handoffs in expert crowdsourcing improve communication and work
output

Expert crowdsourcing allows specialized, remote teams to complete projects,
often large and involving multiple stages. Its execution is complicated due to
communication difficulties between remote workers. This paper investigates
whether structured handoff methods, from one worker to the next, improve final
product quality by helping the workers understand the input of their tasks and
reduce overall integration cost. We investigate this question through 1) a
"live" handoff method where the next worker shadows the former via screen
sharing technology and 2) a "recorded" handoff, where workers summarize work
done for the next, via a screen capture and narration. We confirm the need for
a handoff process. We conclude that structured handoffs result in higher
quality work, improved satisfaction (especially for workers with creative
tasks), improved communication of non-obvious instructions, and increased
adherence to the original intent of the project.

People recovering from arm injuries are often prescribed limits to the
amount of strain they can place on their muscles at a given point during the
recovery process. However, it is sometimes difficult for them to know when a
given activity creates strain in excess of these limits. To inform this
process, we have developed a prototype, the LightWeight, and describe it here.
The aim of the LightWeight is to inform users of the strain on targeted muscles
as the activity occurs, and to display the relationship of that strain to the
aforementioned limits. LightWeight is embedded within a compression sleeve that
measures muscle strain through conductive fabric and EMG while displaying that
information through an intuitive circular LED display.

Push-push: a two-point touchscreen operation utilizing the pressed state and
the hover state

A drag operation is used for many two-point functions in mouse-based
graphical user interfaces (GUIs), but its usage in touchscreen GUIs is limited
because it is mainly used for scrolling. We propose Push-Push as a second
two-point touchscreen operation that is not in conflict with a drag operation.
We implemented three application scenarios and showed how Push-Push can be used
effectively for other two-point functions while overlapping drag operations are
used for scrolling.

Slack-scroll: sharing sliding operations among scrolling and other GUI
functions

Sliding is one of the basic touchscreen operations, but is mainly used for
scrolling in mobile touchscreen GUIs. As a way to share sliding operations
among scrolling and other GUI functions, we propose Slack-Scroll. We
implemented two application scenarios of Slack-Scroll, and asserted their
feasibility in a user study. All participants could accept and adapt well to
the new techniques enabled by Slack-Scroll.

We present FlickBoard, which combines a trackpad and a keyboard into the
same interaction area to reduce hand movement between separate keyboards and
trackpads. It supports automatic input mode detection and switching (ie.
trackpad vs keyboard mode) without explicit user input. We developed a
prototype by embedding a 58x20 capacitive sensing grid into a soft keyboard
cover, and uses machine learning to distinguish between moving a cursor
(trackpad mode) and entering text (keyboard mode). Our prototype has a thin
profile and can be placed over existing keyboards.

Finding missing items has always been troublesome. To tackle the hassle,
several systems have been suggested; yet they are inflexible due to excessive
setup time, operational cost, and effectiveness. We present Traceband; a
lightweight and portable bracelet, which keeps track of every targeted commonly
used object that a user interacts with. Users can find the location of missing
items via a web-based software portal.

This research aims to enable tangential force input for touch panels by
measuring the tangential force. The system is composed of a plastic sheet on a
touch panel, urethane pillars on the panel that are aligned at the four corners
of the bezel, and a case on top of the pillars. When the sheet moves with a
finger, the pillars deform so that a tangential force can be obtained by
measuring the movement of the finger. We evaluated the method and found that
the system showed realistic force sensing accuracy in any direction. This input
method will enable development of new applications for touch panels such as
using any part of the touch panel surface as joysticks, or modeling virtual
objects by deforming them with the fingers.

In this poster, we describe a framework and toolkit (Ethereal) for creating
spatially adaptive content based on complex spatial and visual metrics in
augmented reality, and demonstrate our approach with an illustrative example.

We present three novel methods to facilitate one hand targeting at
discomfort regions on a mobile touch screen using tilting gestures; TiltSlide,
TiltReduction, and TiltCursor. We conducted a controlled user study to evaluate
them in terms of their performance and user preferences by comparing them with
other related methods, i.e. ThumbSpace, Edge Triggered with Extendible Cursor
(ETEC), and Direct Touch (directly touching with a thumb). All three methods
showed better performance than ThumbSpace in terms of speed and accuracy.
Moreover, TiltReduction led users to require less thumb/grip movement than
Direct Touch while showing comparable performance in speed and accuracy.

We introduce the design and fabrication process of integrating optical fiber
into pneumatically driven soft composite shape changing interfaces. Embedded
optical waveguides can provide both sensing and illumination, and add one more
building block to the design of designing soft pneumatic shape changing
interfaces.

Websites need to be displayed on a panoply of different devices today, but
most websites are designed with fixed widths only appropriate to browsers on
workstation computers. We propose to programmatically rewrite websites into
responsive formats capable of adapting to different device display sizes. To
accomplish this goal, we cast retargeting as a cross-compilation problem. We
decompose existing HTML pages into boxes (lexing), infer hierarchical structure
between these boxes (parsing) and finally generate parameterized layouts from
the hierarchical structure (code generation). This document describes
preliminary work on ReMorph, a prototype 'retargeting as cross-compilation'
system.

We propose an automatic deposition method of bacteria spores, which deform
thin soft materials under environmental humidity change. We describe the
process of two-dimensional printing the spore solution as well as a design
application. This research intends to contribute to the understanding of the
control and pre-programming the transformation of future interfaces.

The ultimate problem of systems facilitating long-term health and fitness
goals is the disconnect between an action and its eventual consequence. As the
long-term effects of behavior change are not immediately apparent, it can be
hard to motivate the desired behavior over a long period of time. As such, we
introduce a system that uses physical feedback through a wearable device that
inflates around the stomach as a response to calorie overconsumption,
simulating the long-term weight-gain associated with over-eating. We tested a
version of this system with 12 users over a period of 2 days, and found a
significant decrease in consumption over a baseline period of the same length,
suggesting that through physical response, FatBelt moved calorie intake
drastically closer to participants' goals. Interviews with participants
indicate that isomorphism to the long-term consequences was a large factor in
the system's efficacy. In addition, the wearable, physical feedback was
perceived as an extension of the user's body, an effect with great emotional
consequences.

Wearable devices and mobile devices have great potential to detect various
body motions as they are attached to different body parts. We present
M-Gesture, a geometric gesture authoring framework using multiple wearable
devices. We implemented physical metaphor, geometric gesture language, and
continuity in spatial layout for easy and clear gesture authoring. M-Gesture
demonstrates the use of geometric notation as an intuitive gesture language.

Eugenie: gestural and tangible interaction with active tokens for bio-design

We present a case study of a tangible user interface that implements novel
interaction techniques for the construction of complex queries in large data
sets. Our interface, Eugenie, utilizes gestural interaction with active
physical tokens and a multi-touch interactive surface to aid in the
collaborative design process of synthetic biological circuits. We developed new
interaction techniques for navigating large hierarchical data sets and for
exploring a combinatorial design space. The goal of this research is to study
the effect of gestural and tangible interaction with active tokens on
sense-making throughout the bio-design process.

In MOOCs, a single programming exercise may produce thousands of solutions
from learners. Understanding solution variation is important for providing
appropriate feedback to students at scale. The wide variation among these
solutions can be a source of pedagogically valuable examples, and can be used
to refine the autograder for the exercise by exposing corner cases. We present
OverCode, a system for visualizing and exploring thousands of programming
solutions. OverCode uses both static and dynamic analysis to cluster similar
solutions, and lets instructors further filter and cluster solutions based on
different criteria. We evaluated OverCode against a non-clustering baseline in
a within-subjects study with 24 teaching assistants, and found that the
OverCode interface allows teachers to more quickly develop a high-level view of
students' understanding and misconceptions, and to provide feedback that is
relevant to more students.